HERITAGE LANGUAGE SPEAKERS IN UNIVERSITY EDUCATION IN JAPAN: PERSPECTIVES FOR AN INCLUSIVE SOCIETY

Abstract

The educational system in Japan has traditionally been focused on the “one nation, one language” ideology. This has led to the cancellation of minority indigenous and immigrant languages. As a consequence heritage speakers are dealing with the loss of their heritage languages. However there are isolated movements addressing the maintenance of the heritage languages that do not make a long-lasting effect in the educational system. In an attempt to support reversing this language and identity loss we based our research in two main points: 1) the belief that creating an informed partnership will help HLS to integrate in the mainstream education space (Cummins: 2014) and  2) the confidence in the relevance of interconnecting the isolated movements for language maintenance. Would it be possible to achieve it in the Japanese educational context? Can we start scaffolding this new structure of informed partnership from the university level? In order to try to prove this point of view successfully, this article describes the creation at the university level of a class about Heritage languages and speakers in Japan, inspired in the CLIL model (Content and language Integrated Learning). This class is meant to support and interact with another class that was developed in the same university called "Spanish for heritage students". The student population is 14, almost half of them with a heritage language or culture. The course duration was one semester. The contents that were selected to reach the class goals are mentioned, as well as some points of view regarding what should be done to shift the Japanese educational system from a homogeneous stance to a multicultural inclusive posture.